Disappointment Follows Disappointment for the Pound

We’re back with yet another currency report for you here, and a chance for you to discover how the British pound performed last week. As you can tell, it was far from a good picture.

An overview of the currency markets for February 5th – February 9th, 2018

So, we begin the first full week of February with bad news for the British pound – at least where the US dollar is concerned. The opening rate this week was 1.4219, but an immediate drop to 1.4045 on Monday evening gave us cause for concern. This was borne out by another fall on Tuesday, this time to 1.3870. Just as we thought the week would send us into freefall, we had two far better days to follow. By Thursday, the pound was in better shape on 1.4000. However, the final day saw another fall to 1.3830, so there was little to appreciate here.

It soon became obvious this would be a tough week for the pound. The same pattern was seen against the euro too, where the week began on 1.1383 before seeing two falls over the first two days that took it to 1.1250 by Tuesday night. And yes, we did rise again over the next two days to achieve a rate of 1.1426 on Thursday, but again, the week ended badly. Here, the pound could only muster a closing exchange rate of 1.1268 on Friday night.

Would we see the same pattern replicated once more against the Hong Kong dollar? Indeed, we would. The pound opened trading on 11.120 before the dollar overpowered it to push it back to 10.845 by Tuesday evening. While the pound recouped some of those losses over the next two days to finish Thursday on 10.946, it would drop further to 10.816 by the time Friday was done.

Our one hope now was that things would turn out differently in New Zealand, and perhaps Australia too. The British pound began on 1.9305 against the Kiwi dollar, but the first three days were poor here. That took us back to 1.9054 by Wednesday evening. There was a surge to 1.9386 on Thursday, which meant the pound finish that day better than it had begun the week, but we could almost see disappointment on the horizon. Indeed, the pound finished on 1.9103 just one day later.

We experienced a more uncertain picture against the Australian dollar, if that was possible. This was an up-and-down affair, starting with the ‘down’ element on Monday. The opening rate of 1.7791 soon dropped to 1.7685, and from there we were rising and falling by the day. The pound eventually finished the week on 1.7715, so at least the fall here was less pronounced.

Notable events in the world of currency

A similar picture against the Canadian dollar

Nothing changed here, as the pound fell from 1.7515 to 1.7438 over the course of the week.

A significant disappointment against the Swiss franc

Here too, the news got worse. The pound began the week on 1.3199 yet by Friday night this had dropped to 1.2959.

Another significant fall against the Icelandic krona

Even the less well-known currencies got the better of the pound last week. The Icelandic currency pushed back from 143.252 to 141.269 by the time the week was over.

Well, it was impossible to find any reasonably good news for the British pound last week. We’d had better luck in January, at least here and there, but this was far from the best start to the next month. At this point, it is impossible to tell whether this could be the beginning of a prolonged slump, or whether it is just a bad week from which we may recover. Hopefully, we can expect some good news next week, but we highly doubt it will produce some results that will reverse this week’s bad news.

We shall be watching closely and bringing you the latest figures next week, so you will know how the British pound has fared on the currency markets as February presses on.